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Ecobank appoints MFS Africa Ltd as digital payment partner

The customers of Ecobank can now transact with more than 170 million mobile wallets across the continent. (Image source: M. Hassan/Flickr)

Ecobank, the pan-African bank, has announced the appointment of MFS Africa as a digital payment partner for Ecobank account holders to provide cross-platform payment services

The partnership will allow the bank customers to send and receive money to and from over 170 million mobile money users through integration with MFS Africa that covers all telcos in the MFS Africa Hub, the bank said in a press release.

The service will be both domestic and cross-border intra-Africa transfers using Rapidtransfer, Ecobank’s proprietary instant remittance product, it added.

In line with the bank’s digital strategy, the partnership with MFS Africa Hub is said to create the first major initiative of interoperability between the bank account and mobile money customers.

This will give mobile money customers greater value, as they can now send money directly to any bank account in Ecobank without any infrastructural obstacles.

Ade Ayeyemi, CEO of Ecobank Group, said, “The partnership between Ecobank and MFS Africa represents a significant step in building pan-African linkages between mobile money services and traditional banking channels.”

“Banks and other financial service providers seeking to integrate to mobile wallet systems are confined to domestic markets with almost no interoperability among networks in a single country, let alone across borders, severely inhibiting utility, efficiency, and customer experience. The collaboration between Ecobank Banking Group and MFS Africa eliminates this hurdle and accelerates the ecosystem, driving financial inclusion and offering a greater range of options to Africans,” Ayeyemi explained.

Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa added that the region’s financial inclusion landscape offers exciting opportunities for innovation and collaboration between Banks, other financial institutions, Mobile Money Operators and Fintech.

“The relationship between banks and fintech has been competitive but Ecobank has demonstrated a win-win approach to partnership that takes care of every stakeholder in the value chain. Ecobank is the first financial institution that shares the MFS Africa vision to make financial services more seamless, convenient, and interoperable across Africa,” Okoudjou concluded.

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